Why breakthrough technologies fail to be adopted

Scale-up, risk, and system inertia 

We already knew enough “decent technology.” No sooner had the fire risk of lithium-ion batteries been raised than an announcement of a breakthrough in research on an all-solid-state battery was made. In a similar case, solar and wind power sources have been among the most prominent alternatives to existing fossil-fuel power plants across recent years. Nevertheless, those sources still accounted for approximately 15% of the global energy supply in 2025. Research on immediate reactions to severe problems is flourishing, and pilot experiments about the research are proving their effectiveness; the indicator index is also better than that of past technologies. Nevertheless, why are these technologies not adopted in real industrial fields? In my view, the answer to the question lies outside the technology rather than in it. 

Scale-up 

A reason many prospective technologies fail to be adopted in the industry is not technological immaturity but rather a failure to undergo a qualitative shift toward industrialization. To upscale the laboratory process to a commercial scale, we need to consider additional factors that are not necessary at the laboratory scale, such as multistep process design, sustained continuous operation, impurity control, and downstream process integration. From the factory owner's perspective, even though the new technology has proven superior to the existing one, because the whole process is designed around the old technology, introducing the new technology might become a burden for owners. As a result, in practice, the difficulty escalates sharply once these requirements are aligned with real industrial demand and production constraints. As process complexity increases, companies are forced to confront trade-offs that do not appear at the laboratory scale. Consequently, rather than adopting a new technology as a fully integrated system, firms often choose to implement it selectively—applying it only to specific steps within an existing process where disruption can be minimized. In this sense, the technology is technically feasible, yet remains systemically unwieldy. It works in isolation, but not comfortably within the broader industrial framework. This gap between technical possibility and system-level operability constitutes one of the primary reasons why otherwise promising technologies fail to achieve full commercialization. 

Risk 

A second reason for the failure of adoption lies in the rational calculation of risk. Corporate caution toward new technologies is often misinterpreted as simple inertia or resistance to innovation; in reality, it reflects a highly calculated assessment of uncertainty. Introducing a new process typically requires not only process redesign but also adjustments to regulatory strategy, preparation for changes in impurity profiles, and contingency planning for potential increases in unplanned downtime. These risks operate at the system level and are difficult to offset through improvements in the performance of a single technology. As a result, even when a technology demonstrates clear technical advantages, its adoption may be deferred if the associated risks are not clearly bounded or controllable. Similar to the “fast-fail” culture observed in pharmaceutical development—where large-scale manufacturing investments are postponed in the absence of clinical certainty—industries tend to withhold full adoption when technological feasibility is decoupled from manageable operational risk. 

System inertia 

A third reason lies in system inertia. Many industrial sites still operate batch plants with sufficient production capacity, and much of this infrastructure has already been fully depreciated or is operating under fixed repayment schedules. Beyond physical assets, organizational structures, regulatory compliance frameworks, auditing procedures, and safety management systems are all designed around existing processes. Under such conditions, adopting a new technology is not simply about achieving a marginal improvement in yield or efficiency. From a firm’s perspective, maintaining a predictable and well-understood system—even at the cost of accepting modest technical inefficiencies—often represents the more rational choice. When the entire industrial ecosystem has solidified around an incumbent technology, innovative alternatives struggle to gain traction regardless of their intrinsic performance. In this sense, system inertia functions as a structural barrier, constraining technological adoption independently of technical merit. 

Expertise shortage 

In addition, a shortage of expertise constitutes a significant barrier to adoption. Emerging processes and technologies often demand modes of thinking and technical stacks that differ fundamentally from those required for conventional batch operations. However, existing education and training systems have been widely criticized for failing to provide the level of competency required for continuous manufacturing, digital process control, and integrated system operation. As a result, practical experience in designing, operating, and managing such technologies is limited to only a small subset of firms and personnel. Internal corporate training programs frequently prove insufficient to close this gap, particularly when hands-on operational exposure is limited. This mismatch between technological complexity and available expertise reinforces organizational hesitation and, in turn, contributes directly to the failure of otherwise viable technologies to be adopted at scale. 

For these reasons, industrial processes as a whole tend to stabilize around incumbent technologies, and firms are reluctant to undertake the risk of fundamentally restructuring such systems. While stability-oriented strategies help reduce short-term financial losses, they simultaneously weaken the incentives to integrate alternative technologies with greater long-term potential into existing process flows. As a result, technological evolution within firms becomes constrained, and over time, they may face a decline in competitiveness relative to more adaptive rivals. 

I argue that to maintain long-term competitiveness, firms must move beyond merely preserving established technologies and pursue strategies that incrementally integrate new technologies into existing process architectures, thereby advancing the overall system. Moreover, failures in the commercialization of new technologies should not be dismissed as simple setbacks; rather, they should be treated as diagnostic tools for identifying structural limitations within organizations and industries. Whether the root cause lies in a shortage of expertise, gaps in educational systems, or deficiencies in internal training frameworks, analyzing such failures can itself serve as a foundation for the next stage of growth. 

The gap between technology and industry has, in fact, recurred repeatedly throughout history. Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) was first introduced in 1913 through BASF’s patent on nickel-catalyzed steam reforming, and by the 1920s, the concept of externally heated steel-tube reformers had already been established. At that time, however, the primary purpose of SMR was not energy production but hydrogen generation for ammonia synthesis and chemical processing. Commercial operation began as early as 1930–31 in Standard Oil refineries, followed by the commissioning of SMR units for ammonia production at ICI Billingham in 1936. Yet it was not until the 1960s that large-scale, high-pressure tubular reformer designs resembling those used today matured into an industrial standard. Furthermore, decades of operational experience accumulated in fertilizer plants and heavy-water production facilities were later transferred to form the technical foundation of modern hydrogen energy systems. 

This case illustrates how limited it is to view technological commercialization solely as a function of scientific or technical completeness. Whether a technology is ultimately adopted depends on system inertia, organizational learning capacity, workforce development structures, and the willingness of industry to accept gradual change under managed risk. Accordingly, the phenomenon of “failure to be adopted” cannot be explained by technological immaturity alone; rather, it should be understood as a question of judgment—how much process scale and maturity industry demands, and what level of risk it is willing to tolerate amid evolving regulatory and policy environments.